BLAST Premier: Fall Final 2024 Preview: popular teams, viewership prediction, & more

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The BLAST Premier: Fall Final 2024 takes place from September 25 to 29 and is the second-last BLAST Premier event of the year, a precursor to the million-dollar World Final event planned for early November. The tournament is a select one, only including 8 of the world’s top Counter-Strike teams, and will give some insight as to how these teams compare against one another before the Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024, later this year.

Throughout this article, Esports Charts will present the most popular attending teams of the Fall Final 2024, the historical and predicted viewership of the Fall Final series, and, in collaboration with betting brand GG.BET, Esports Charts presents statistics as to which teams have had the most money wagered on their success by the average esports viewers. We also thank DATA.BET, a leading provider of esports betting solutions, for their support in gathering game statistics.

The event’s Group Stage will give top-contenders a chance to find their feet before the stakes are raised for the Playoffs. FaZe Clan, Team Falcons, G2 Esports, and NAVI make up Group A, whereas the other group is filled by Astralis, Team Liquid, Team Spirit, and Team Vitality. The top 3 teams from each group will advance, meaning only two unlucky teams will face elimination. Once Playoffs begins, the single-elimination bracket kicks off, and anything could happen.

BLAST Premier: Fall Final 2024 Participants

The Counter-Strike esports scene was shaken up by the release of CS2; previously established top-competitors struggled to find their feet as hot new talent quickly soared up through the community. NAVI look to be one of the strongest teams attending the Final. The Ukrainian organization has achieved a Major championship and won the Esports World Cup 2024 event in their post-s1mple era, cementing their place as one of CS2’s most competitive teams.  Most recently, they took another ESL Pro League title at the Season 20 finals on September 22. 

On the other hand, Team Spirit has collected an eclectic assortment of trophies throughout 2024, but the team has stumbled at some of the higher-tier events, like IEM Cologne. Team Spirit will be looking to consistently place higher at top-tier events, and the Fall Final is a great first step towards this goal. Other top organizations like Team Vitality, FaZe Clan, and G2 Esports have each claimed only a single IEM title this year, and these three famed Counter-Strike organizations are hoping to end 2024 with at least one more trophy in their cabinet. 

Before we turn our look completely towards the future and what the BLAST Premier: Fall Final 2024 holds in store for us, let’s take a look backwards through the history of this event series, and see how viewership has changed over the years.

BLAST Premier: Fall Final 2024 predicted to reach highest viewership in two years

The BLAST Premier series has been a part of Counter-Strike competition since 2019, although the seasonal Finals events were first inaugurated in 2021. The Global Final events in 2019 and 2020 received strong viewership, but 2021 was when the series reached its highest numbers.

The BLAST Premier: Fall 2021 Finals received 338.4K Average Viewers, and the highest peak viewership ever achieved by one of these BLAST Premier tournaments. The event enjoyed a boost in viewership from the profound affect lockdowns and the pandemic had on the livestreaming industry. NAVI and s1mple brought their audiences in full force to watch the Ukrainian team easily make their way through the bracket before claiming the championship. 2021 was a particularly strong year for Counter-Strike viewership, and this Fall Final was the second-most-popular event of the year, falling only behind the record-holding PGL Major Stockholm 2021, with 2.75M peak concurrent viewers.

Following this debut Fall Final, viewership slowed for the series in 2022. As the world emerged from the pandemic, viewership began to fall for these Western esports titles and settled back down to pre-pandemic levels. The BLAST Premier series continued to lose viewership in 2023, except for a small increase at the Fall Final, but this downwards trend has been turned around in 2024.

The 2024 Spring Final was able to reach 252.6K Average Viewers, the highest viewership of any BLAST Premier event since the 2022 Spring Finals. Considering the upwards trend already recorded for 2024, and considering the exciting teams and match-ups this year, Esports Charts predicts the BLAST Premier: Fall Final 2024 to earn 130-195K Average Viewers, which could make the event the most-watched Fall Final since the 2021 edition. This prediction is based on attending teams, past viewerships of these teams, and the overall viewership dynamics of BLAST Premier events.

Of course, the Average Viewers metric for any tournament is heavily affected by the Playoffs stage, which usually reaches the highest viewership. If two of the event’s more popular teams, NAVI and Team Spirit, for example, face off in the event's grand finals, we could expect average viewership to rise to upwards of 195K concurrent average viewers. 

In summary, following the strong performance of the Spring Final 2024, we expect this year’s Fall Finals to be one of the most-watched BLAST Premier events since 2021. To record this strong viewership, the teams featuring late in the Playoffs stage must be popular. If the playoffs stage of the event features less popular teams like Team Falcons or Team Liquid, viewership could fall on the lower-end of the scale. With this in mind, let’s take a look at the popularity of the attendees, based on their Twitch Chat Mentions.

NAVI dominated Summer discussion on Twitch

Twitch Chat statistics present an organic and simple rating of popularity for streamers, ideas, and more. These statistics not only represent the fanbase of each organization, but their brand awareness and general popularity of the organizations across the general esports sphere. To isolate the Counter-Strike community in this data, we included data exclusively from Twitch channels which focus on Counter-Strike. 

Ukrainian team NAVI recorded not only the highest number of raw Mentions throughout the third quarter of 2024, but also the highest peak mentions. NAVI, along with other organizations, enjoyed a serious boost to their Twitch Chat Mentions during IEM Cologne 2024, one of the esports’ premiere events of the year. NAVI quickly made their way to the event’s finals, but ultimately fell to Team Vitality, who defeated them with some clutch overtime victories. Despite Team Vitality ultimately winning the event, they received only 22.3% of the mentions of NAVI. 

NAVI’s closest competitor was G2 Esports, who were discussed differently on Twitch than NAVI. G2 Esports were often more discussed than NAVI outside esports events, but NAVI’s peak popularity during these events blew the other teams out of the water. G2 Esports earned their discsuions more consistently throughout the selected quarter, rather than NAVI who received 47% of all mentions during the week of IEM Cologne 2024.

Teams such as Team Spirit and Team Vitality which are particularly competitive viable were not as popular as other organizations. Despite these two teams representing the Russian and French-speaking audiences for Counter-Strike, their popularity was dwarfed by NAVI.

Astralis, in particular, has seen their popularity fall across recent years. The esports organization was once a dominant force in the Counter-Strike scene, but as their competitive domination has slipped away, so has their overall popularity. Throughout Twitch Chats this Summer, Astralis was discussed less than Team Falcons, who just recently found their footing at Counter-Strike’s top level by signing various Astralis alumni like Magisk, Dupreeh, and coach zonic.

Before we come to a close, let’s see how the average Counter-Strike fans are feeling about teams’ chances at this Fall Final event.

Fans put their money where their mouth is with NAVI

According to the Counter-Strike fans who have put their money where their mouth is, NAVI is the favourite for the upcoming Fall Final 2024 event. The team received 32.4% of all pre-event bets by total cash value so far, almost double that of the next-favourites, Team Liquid: who received 18.6% of all bets. 

Interestingly, NAVI has had the most money wagered on them pre-event, but FaZe Clan received the largest amount of raw bets. Fans are more likely to wager a small amount of cash on FaZe to win the event, but passionate believers of NAVI have been more willing to put their cash on the line. FaZe may be more appealing to a wider, casual fanbase, but NAVI have their fanatical followers in full faith for this event.

Of the four opening matches of the tournament, which will take place on September 25, NAVI’s match against Falcons has the most money riding on it, with 39.1% of all wagered cash laying on this game’s result. The match is the opening game of the tournament, and based on all those to have wagered money on the game’s outcome, we can expect high opening viewership for the first game of the Fall Final 2024.

Again, similar to the previous metrics, G2 Esports’ match against FaZe Clan was the most-bet-on match of the opening stage, but there is no clear favourite among these two competitors. 12.9% of all bet money rides on G2 Esports in their match against FaZe, slightly edging out FaZe themselves, who received 9.4% of the wagered cash. While fans are happy to bet on FaZe’s game against G2 Esports, they aren’t as positive about their teams’ chances as NAVI fans are.

The BLAST Premier: Fall Final 2024 might not be the most popular Fall Final event that BLAST has ever held, but fans are definitely excited about the upcoming games. NAVI’s opening match against Falcons could be one of the event’s most popular matches, as eager fans tune in as the action kicks off, and those with a keen eye for bets back NAVI to take an early lead at the tournament. Follow the action at the Fall Final with the Esports Charts  schedule tab on the tournament page, keeping you updated on when and where to watch the games.